Yesterday, I went to the Chapters store at Granville and Broadway in the early evening. When I got there, the staff were preparing for the midnight launch of the new Harry Potter book. Watching them, I soon found myself changing my mind about all the Harry-hype.
Having read fantasy ever since I discovered it in the sixth grade I’ve always been cool to the popularity of the Harry Potter series. I’ve read all the books, but I’ve only been moderately impressed. J. K. Rowling shows flashes of invention and whimsy, but her books are far from the best children’s fantasy for those in the know. Personally, I’d rate dozens of children’s writers above Rowling – Joan Aiken, Lloyd Alexander, J. R. R. Tolkien, Diana Wynne Jones, Ursula K. LeGuin, Garth Nix, and Philip Pullman, just for starters. Her voice is too uncertain, her characters too stereotyped, and her books too much in need of editing (especially after they became popular) for her to equal writers like the ones I’ve mentioned. Her main innovation is to blend fantasy with the school story to create a sub-genre that is simultaneously new and familiar.
I’d put the series in the middle of the pack: neither outstandingly bad nor – for all the hype – outstandingly original or any sort of literary gem, not even one in the rough.
But if I haven’t been enthusiastic about the books, the promotion has thrilled me even less. For one thing, it seems unnecessary. Why bother to hype a book that you know is going to sell several million copies? Spend the money on some worthy midlist writer, and the publisher could have two bestsellers rather than the one.
More importantly, I had dismissed the midnight book launches and parties as simply another attempt by people to inject a little excitement and meaning into their lives. The attempt seems healthier to me than following a sports team, or seeing terrorists under the bed, but, in the end, the launchings of Rowling’s books have always struck me as being much the same sort of group event, carefully manipulated to allow people an emotional release – a modern update of bread and circuses, really.
But that was before I saw the preparations for the event. The store had put a castle and dragon painted on brown paper around the entrance, and most of the staff was dressed for the occasion. Some were in black, witchy costumes. One woman managed a severity that made her a perfect Severus Snapes – or would have, except that she kept grinning. A man was wearing a top hat and tails with a long blue and white scarf that seemed to owe as much to Doctor Who as Harry Potter. Another woman was wearing wings and a straw hat and layers of loose brown cloth, apparently meant to be a house elf or at least some supernatural being. Still another woman had a brightly colored snake pained on her face that ran from her right cheek across her temple and down to her left temple.
These people and more were rushing around setting up tables and putting out stacks of Rowling’s previous books and the Harry Potter action figures. Given the wages of the average book store clerk, you might have expected them to be complaining about the extra work and the longer hours.
Yet that’s not what they were doing. Instead, they were laughing and chatting animatedly as they worked, pausing to show their costumes off to each other.
That’s when I had a Scrooge-like conversion. If all the promotional events could give so much pleasure to those organizing them (let alone the children for whom all the effort was for), they couldn’t be all bad.
Yes, the object of this attention seemed unfairly singled out from among her betters, and the promotions seem needless, and the motives behind them cynical. Yet, all too obviously, they were a welcome break in routine, and a chance those involved usually didn’t have to exercise their creativity. From the unpromising origins of the launch, they had managed to make something approaching a holiday.
That’s why, for all my misgivings, I don’t really have the heart to criticize. Anything that brings such gifts to people can’t be all bad. So, while I’m not buying a Christmas goose and hurrying off to Bob Cratchit’s house loaded with gifts for the family, I am looking at all the activity with a far more benevolent eye than a couple of days ago.
Off the Wall 
I have to agree with you. I’m kind of ambivalent to the hype myself. On one hand you’ve got kids (and adults) reading, which is great, but on the other hand what they’re reading is mediocre. And I think the marketing is genius and really as old as marketing itself. You’re not just buying the book, you’re buying an experience. When my co-workers (some of whom were in their forties), talked excitely about getting the book that they had to reserve and how they’d be in all weekend reading, I just kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to ruin their experience, but I’m a writer, and I read to learn. I don’t feel there is that much that can be learned as a writer from JK’s books, other than, perhaps, successful marketing techniques.